1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to covers for protecting golf club heads and/or adjacent shaft portions, wherein a cover is opened or closed by simple manipulation of hinged portions of the cover.
2. The Prior Art
A golf club comprises a wooden, metal, or composite head and a shaft joining to and extending from the head, and is typically carried in a golf bag together with a plurality of other golf clubs. Golf clubs vary among themselves in lengths, so clubs carried in a golf bag often have their heads and adjacent shaft portions come into contact with one another, scratching and damaging them. Protective covers are often used, which are carried either on the club heads alone or on both head and shaft portions to protect the clubs from one another. However, putting such protective covers onto the heads and shafts and detaching the covers for use of the clubs has heretofore been quite inconvenient. A number of head covers, operating in various ways, have been proposed to lessen such inconvenience.
Korean Patent Application No. 2001-63698, filed by the present inventor, seems the most advanced among the known head covers. It discloses a cover comprising a protective body of woven fabric that surrounds the golf club head and an adjacent shaft portion, a hinged frame carried within and supporting the woven body, and a pair of wings joined along a hinge between and extending along the frame. Springs are attached to inner surfaces of wing portions of the frame to urge or bias the frame to an open configuration. Such wings have facing free side edges fitted with cooperating locking means for selectively keeping the cover closed. The locking means comprises a hook and loop type fastener, magnetic means, or a Velcro(copyright) or other fastener.
Although a magnet may conveniently be used as the locking means, the magnet and cooperating iron strike piece are relatively expensive to buy and install and are not reliable in operation. Total cost of materials for manufacturing the whole cover is raised, so price competitiveness of the cover is lowered. The structure for attaching a magnet and plate is also complicated, so production of the cover is slow and labor-intensive. Moreover, a magnet requires a very short distance to its iron strike piece to create a sufficient attractive force between them. Often the magnet fails to lock the cover closed because the protective cover body, of woven cushioning fabric, comes between the mating pieces. In addition, the attracting force of the magnet is reduced over time, particularly if the cover is left open. Alternatively, it is very difficult to attach an elongated Velcro(copyright) fastener to long and narrow areas of both side edges of the frame, thereby again lowering productivity of workers making the covers. Furthermore, some users will avoid such closures due to the unpleasant ripping sound generated upon opening a Velcro fastener.
Other known head covers are less convenient to use and/or are more expensive to make than that noted above. The art has lacked a simple, inexpensive head and shaft cover for golf clubs that will protect such clubs from one another yet permit one-handed opening and closing of the cover.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a cover for protecting a golf club head and/or adjacent shank, the cover being easily opened and closed and held in the open and closed positions by an elastic means such as a rubber or synthetic elastic cord without requiring any locking means, thereby permitting very easy, convenient manipulation of the cover.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a cover for protecting a golf club head and/or adjacent shank, the cover being moved between open and closed positions only by overcoming the tension of an elastic means, so the cover can be produced at significantly lowered cost and can be used over a long term without any loss of effectiveness, due to the very simple structure.
In order to accomplish the above objects, the present invention provides a cover for protecting a golf club head and/or shank portion that includes a hinged pair of wings opened and closed along at least one hinge, such as a living hinge, disposed between the pair of wings. The cover in one form further comprises slot openings laterally formed in the pair of wings, at points crossing the hinge line, and elastic means passing through the slots and fixed at both ends to the wings. The wings are elastically urged toward either the open position or the closed position, depending on which side of a center point the wings are located during an opening or a closing movement, as the elastic cord moves sideways through the slot and the hinge line.
The cover in another form has slot openings laterally formed in each of the pair of wings extending across the hinge line and a stopper at a mid point in or between the slot openings for preventing further inward movement of the elastic cord. The elastic cord passes through the slot openings and is fixed at both ends to the wings; it forms into a xe2x80x9cVxe2x80x9d shape upon being caught by the stopper as the wings are closed under tension of the cord acting on the wings.